A small wedding should cost less. Here it does.
A wedding for 50 guests, with dinner served, comes to about $12,500 before sales tax. That includes the venue, setup, staff, coordination, dinner, and cleanup.
Below, we break down exactly where that number comes from, plus the seven things to ask every venue before comparing their price to ours.
You only pay for the people who come
Catering, rentals, and staffing all depend on how many people you invite. But most other venues build their packages around 100 guests or more. Some even lock in that number when you sign. So if you’re dreaming of a quiet celebration with 40 of your favorite people, you could still be paying for 60 empty seats.
Here, your wedding is priced around the people actually celebrating with you. You pay per guest, not for a preset package. Our minimum is 30, and we’re flexible with smaller gatherings, too.
Ask every venue about these seven things
- The site fee
- Usually: A flat charge just for the grounds, quoted before anyone has eaten a thing. It's often the number a venue leads with, and rarely the number you end up paying.
- Willow Woods: None. The per-person price covers the park itself.
- The food minimum
- Usually: A minimum you promise to spend on catering. Spend less than that, and you're billed the difference anyway.
- Willow Woods: You'll never be billed for food nobody ate. Dinner is included with Premium. With Traditional, the meal is yours to arrange: LouEddie's, 50 steps across the property, or a caterer we approve ahead of time, with no fee for bringing them.
- The guest minimum
- Usually: Some venues set one, and others price their packages for 100 guests and up. Where there's a floor, it can climb on a Friday or Saturday, exactly the dates you want most.
- Willow Woods: A floor of 30, any day of the week, and we make exceptions below it. We invoice your final count, not a number set at signing.
- The service charge
- Usually: A percentage tacked on at the end, after you've already done the math. Some venues up here add it, some build it into the headline price, and some skip it entirely. Ask early which one you're dealing with.
- Willow Woods: None, on either package.
- The rentals
- Usually: Tables, chairs, linens, glassware, flatware. A third-party list, priced item by item and delivered on somebody else's schedule.
- Willow Woods: Banquet chairs, 60-inch rounds, floor-length linens, plates, glasses, flatware. Set out before you arrive and cleared after you leave, in both packages.
- The hours
- Usually: A window shorter than the day you're picturing, with overtime charged by the hour the moment you run past it.
- Willow Woods: Traditional runs five hours and Premium six, and neither the setup before nor the cleanup after counts against your time. Music stops at 9 pm, so everyone gets home safe with the evening still ahead of them in Lake Arrowhead Village.
- Sales tax
- Usually: It applies to the food and the rentals, not to the whole subtotal, so you can't add one percentage to the bottom line and call it done.
- Willow Woods: 7.75% in San Bernardino County. It's the only thing added to the per-person price.
Every venue prices the venue differently
- A site fee
- The grounds for a set number of hours. Catering, rentals, staff and a coordinator all sit outside it, so the headline covers the smallest share of the day.
- A package from a minimum
- The grounds plus whatever the venue has chosen to bundle, priced for a guest count it chose too. No two bundles hold the same things, so two packages rarely describe the same day.
- A price per guest
- The grounds and everything the venue does on the day, times the number of guests. It leaves the least out, which is why it looks biggest per head and is often the smallest total.
To compare two venues, put them in the same shape: the venue’s full invoice for your guest count, plus the rentals, staff and coordination you’d otherwise buy separately. Then divide by the number of guests. That’s the only venue cost that means the same thing everywhere.
Here it’s already in that shape. Traditional is from $199 per person for the park set up, staffed, coordinated and cleaned up. Premium is from $249 per person and adds dinner, so the totals below use Premium: a full evening against a full evening.
The average wedding isn't your wedding
So an average tells you very little about a wedding of 40.
Most of the other venues within 20 miles start around $23,000, and they’re built and priced for 100 guests or more. Put one of those quotes next to Premium, the package with dinner included, so you’re comparing a full evening to a full evening. The shorter your guest list, the wider that gap gets.
- 30 guests, dinner served
- from $7,500
- 50 guests, dinner served
- from $12,500
- 80 guests, dinner served
- from $19,900
What couples want to know first
- Willow Woods Park address
- Willow Woods Park28561 State Hwy 18Skyforest, CA 92385
The only number that matters is yours
Send us a date and a rough head count, and we’ll come back with an exact quote and what else is open around it. We generally reply within one business day, or you can call (909) 916-0002.
